Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Staring Marrion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law & Gwyneth Paltrow
Rated M
Score 5/6

Soon after her return from a business trip to Hong Kong, Beth Emhoff dies from what is a flu or some other type of infection. Her young son dies later the same day. Her husband Mitch however seems immune. Thus begins the spread of a deadly infection. For doctors and administrators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, several days pass before anyone realizes the extent or gravity of this new infection. They must first identify the type of virus in question and then find a means of combating it.

My first thought about Contagion was that it would have been a lot like the 1995 movie Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman. Though pretty quickly it became obvious that Contagion has evolved substantially from the benchmark that was set in 1995 by Outbreak. This was because of the fear that has been generated by events such as the War on Terrorism, the bird flu pandemic and the outbreak of the SARS virus. I was impressed by both Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne’s performances because I felt that their characters seemed to represent different sides of the same coin.
The filmmakers took time to research the science so that they would fall into the trap of ‘Hollywood science’. For those who are interested you should realise that although the MEV-1 is fictional the Nipah virus inspired it.